Autonauts

Abuse countless robotic workers in service of a few do-nothing citizens as you convert pristine natural landscape into an industrial mess. Then once you get home you can come do that in this game as well, except now you have to program the robots instead.

The programming element is such a unique take on the automation genre that I really enjoy.
Unlike other games of the genre, this one is packed in a cute colorful art style. It continues to trick me into picking it up for a cozy relaxed couch gaming moment, and then itches my need for optimizing everything.
10/10, will be tricked into spreadsheet gameplay again.

I’ve played Autonauts for over 500 hours, and it’s still one of the most enjoyable and relaxing games I own. The mix of automation, creativity, and progression keeps me coming back. There’s always something new to optimize or improve, and watching your little bots bring your ideas to life never gets old. Highly recommended for anyone who loves building, tinkering, and chill gameplay.

amazing game, optimizing your bots can be tricky at times if you want to limit their numbers but otherwise pretty straightforward, the tech tree is relly fresh and strange and the whole game feels goofy in a good way, *will* recommend

Autonauts is a charming and inventive simulation game that combines the relaxing appeal of base-building with the cerebral satisfaction of programming automation. Developed by Denki and published by Curve Games, the game places you on a colorful, uninhabited planet with the goal of colonizing and industrializing it—not through brute force or efficiency-driven metrics, but through a whimsical, coding-lite approach centered around teaching adorable robots how to do everything for you. The result is a peaceful, open-ended experience that gradually evolves from simple crafting into complex systems engineering.
The game begins with nothing but a land full of natural resources and a basic workbench. You start by manually gathering sticks and stones to craft primitive tools, but it quickly becomes clear that your true power lies in automation. Early on, you build your first robot and teach it tasks by recording your own actions, essentially creating a visual script. This mechanic is the heart of Autonauts, and it’s surprisingly intuitive: you perform an action, your robot mimics it, and then you refine the script with loops, conditionals, and storage instructions. Over time, you develop entire production lines of bots—one chopping trees, another planting saplings, others transporting materials—all working in harmony under your direction.
One of the game’s most engaging aspects is the sense of gradual mastery it fosters. Each new tier of automation builds on the last, forcing you to think in terms of dependencies and process optimization. You’ll eventually create bots to farm, cook, mine, manufacture complex components, and even care for human colonists, who arrive once your society reaches a certain level of sophistication. These humans don’t work or automate, but instead require food, shelter, and entertainment—adding a new layer of responsibility and planning that blends nicely with the otherwise robotic structure of your colony.
The visual style is deliberately low-poly and bright, with bold colors and simple animations that enhance the relaxing atmosphere. The sound design complements this tone with cheerful background music and playful sound effects that make even mundane tasks feel satisfying. It’s a game that invites tinkering without stress. There's no combat, no survival mechanics, and no failure state in the traditional sense—just your growing factory, your increasingly smart little bots, and the complex, self-sufficient civilization you’re slowly building.
Progression in Autonauts is tied to research, which unlocks new crafting stations, tools, and bot upgrades. The pace can feel slow at times, particularly in the mid-game when you're trying to scale up your operations but still dealing with basic bots and short-range tools. However, the ability to upgrade bots with more memory, better locomotion, and specialized tools eventually opens the door to enormous systems. The challenge becomes one of logistics and planning rather than execution, as your own role shifts from laborer to systems architect. It’s deeply satisfying to step back and watch an entire production pipeline hum along without your input.
That said, Autonauts is not without its hurdles. The interface, while clean, can become cluttered as your colony grows and more bots are introduced. Managing dozens or even hundreds of bots—each with their own scripts—can become overwhelming, especially without robust sorting or grouping tools. Some players may also find the learning curve steep, especially if they’re unfamiliar with logic-based systems or coding concepts, though the tutorial and early missions do a decent job of easing newcomers into the mechanics.
Despite these minor flaws, Autonauts succeeds as a creative and meditative take on automation and colony-building. It scratches the itch for logical problem-solving without the high-pressure stakes seen in many factory games. It’s ideal for players who enjoy designing elegant solutions and watching their creations unfold over time. The game's blend of simplicity and depth gives it a unique identity in the genre, and for those who appreciate a slower, more thoughtful approach to automation, Autonauts is a delightfully rewarding experience that can easily consume dozens of hours.
Rating: 8/10

It's a very cute game with the basis in visual programming. The objective is to craft items, to craft more advanced items, to craft more advanced items. The pacing is good. You start out with simple things and as you advance through the stages, it adds slightly more complexity. If you like automation and tweaking things to be more efficient, this is the type of game for you.

There are a lot of neat tricks you can do with the robots, but you're limited in the number of commands you can assign them, so you will have to be efficient in your tasks.
Overall, I'm really enjoying it, and each new stage of the game adds a lot of new fun toys to figure out how to add into your current flow.

On the programming side of things:
You're bound to visual only programming using a recording system. It would be nice if you could type in the commands manually or if the command list had all the options, but you're forced to do the task yourself to show the robot, then you can copy/paste and shift things around using the visual layout. This is mostly likely to prevent someone from just sitting in one spot and programming the bots, and also to prevent overwhelming people.

The programming can be a bit complex at times and requires you to think about how these things function and why:
You can't set any variables nor tag specific items, so you will have to program around that. For agriculture, there doesn't seem to be a way to parse the status of the plants. For example: There are flags for watered, fertilized, and toiled, but you can't tell the robots to check for these flags. You have to simply program around the limitation.
Robots often get stuck on a task if there are multiple robots working on it. Example: Look for the wheelbarrow at X location after finishing Y task. Then another robot grabs the wheelbarrow and walks off with it. The first robot just stands around looking for the wheelbarrow and often won't error out.
There is also an "unreserve" option that I don't recall ever being talked about. When the robots go after an item, they place a reservation on it, which prevents other robots from targetting it. You can unreserve to remove the lock.
There is a checkbox on the loop function that will exit the loop on an error (usually a timeout during an action). I don't recall the game ever telling me about this option, so I was unaware of it until I read some pages about the game itself.

Picked this game up during the winter sale. Lovely experience so far.
Very easy to get in to, enough to do to not be an idle game. Basically you continuously set up new projects whilst your former automations proceed.
Whilst the in game information is pretty good, I did find it helpful to have the wiki up on a different monitor so I could easily navigate between. That being said, the online wiki is pretty good as well!
Unfortunately, I did encounter 3 bugs, but nothing gamebreaking, quickly relaunching the game fixed the issues.
With how much is going on, the performance of the game seems to be really well. I do have quite a beefy PC but no performance issues I noticed.
The game is really easy for anyone to get in to, no hostility of creatures means you can go as fast or slow paced as you wish. The 'programming' part of the bots is easy to follow and for those concerned: No actual programming knowledge is needed to play this game.
One thing I wish I figured out sooner is that when bots pick up an item crafted by a station, it looks for an item and then paths to it. Even though the items will always be on the exact same tile, it specifically assigns the target to the bot once it starts pathing there. Meaning that if you pick it up yourself whilst the bot is already moving, it will not pick up the next item crafted and therefore malfunction. Thus, using a while empty hands (find target, move to target, pick up target) instead of if empty hands (...) is needed to make sure it confirms picking up the item and having it before continuing its tasks.
In terms of value, I think this game scores decent. 20 bucks is quite a lot, unless you really like the chill automation games without pressure from hostile creatures. Whilst you can idle the game on the side there's really no point as your storages are fairly small, and upscaling your bots can be done rapidly. I'd say your first playthrough takes about 60 hours. So especially on sale you deffo can get great value out of that.